Contents Under Pressure
by FluffleNeCharka
Summary: Trying to become the person she wants to be, Suzie finds growing up is not as easy as it looks, nor is leading a new team of Tamers against an unknown foe. They say it's darkest before the dawn, but is there a dawn coming?
1. Exposed

**Author's Note:** Done for the Live Journal Overlooked Characters community. Ten one shots revolving around Suzie's life post D-Reaper, how the loss of Lopmon affects her, and her interactions with her family now that so much has changed.

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**Theme One: Exposed**

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Maybe people just thought she was stupid.

She felt their eyes on her wherever she went now. People who knew her seemed to be constantly asking her if she was alright nowadays. She had changed. Part of it was conscious effort, but most of it was just the involuntary change that came with losing a dear friend. There was something about knowing she was truly alone that made everything change. The one person who really saw her for who she was and appreciated it was gone. The one being who enjoyed being with her, wanted to be her friend, was trapped in another dimension and nothing was going to change that. Suzie carried herself differently. She walked with her head held high because she was a Tamer and she would never cry again like a little girl. Suzie hadn't tried to grow up. She'd been thrust into it. Now she was just trying to keep her head above the water, so to speak. Not everything had been solved by her adventures in the Digital World. In fact, some problems had been made far worse. Some things were slowly being brought to the surface once again, and this time she wasn't going to just stand there and be bossed around by everyone.

There was no escaping the fact that Henry thought of her as a baby still. He didn't want her to so much as go for a walk by herself. He thought she was fragile, a delicate doll that could be broken by the slightest bump. She had to reign in her anger tightly. She was trying not to be a baby anymore, but no matter how much she changed she would never be his equal in his eyes. She would never be good enough. Suzie was his baby sister, emphasis on baby, helpless and weak, no matter what she said or did to contest that opinion. Once she might've cried over it. Once when she had someone to run to she would have sobbed because it cut like a knife to be thought of as an idiot eternally. Now she knew she couldn't do that or he'd rub her face it. He'd point to her and say that this was exactly what he was talking about.

A simple solution to the bickering was to leave the house. She had to become a better Tamer, a more grown up one. So she had invested in the card game with every spare cent she had and could often be found trading cards with the kids at school. Suzie would figure it all out and come up with strategies to make Lopmon a good fighter. After how nice the digimon had been to her, it would be a good gift in return, Suzie figured. She wanted her partner to know she loved her dearly and hadn't forgotten her. What better way to show that than to be a good Tamer, to have all the right cards and know them like the back of her hand? The little girl in her was determined to be a good friend. The overlooked sister within her wanted to show Henry just what she was made of. She wanted to be just as good as the big kids so that no one would ever pick on her again. She'd had it with the constant complaining and doubting her brother did. It grated on her and she just didn't have the patience for it.

Hence the exiting the building or, when that was not possible, locking her door. She was still a fuming child, but she could at least keep her mouth shut now. She'd show them, she'd show them all just how good of a hero she really was. Her dolls and stuffer animals gathered dust until she put them in boxes to make room for the growing amounts of digimon merchandise in her room. There were books on car game strategies and boxes of assorted cards scattered everywhere. She didn't know when, but she'd managed to acquire a less little girly hairstyle. The dual buns and long strands of hair framing her face made her look like Yuehon from the World Tour episodes of the TV show, or so she told herself when she needed a confidence boost. No matter what she said or did, somewhere underneath it all she was still a little girl playing dress up and imagining herself to be a grand and intimidating Tamer. Perhaps these flights of fantasy were necessary for dealing with her obnoxious older brother. Maybe she wasn't as grown up as she thought. Either way, sometimes when she was alone in the park she would imagine herself older and stronger and a real hero. She told herself she looked like Rika and was super tough like her.

In the end, though, she wasn't. Late at night, under the safe covers of her blanket, she still felt the longing for her partner. She wanted to cry until she was sick. She wanted to voice the incredible void her partner's absence had left in her. Suzie missed Lopmon more than she had words to say. But to do that would expose to the world that she wasn't as tough as she tried to be, that she was no hero, just a crying little girl, and she couldn't let that happen. If everything that was her were revealed and known people would see the lonely kid she really was. They would go back to treating her like she was an idiot. She had to channel her incredible imagination and energy into different outlets now or they'd all stop caring about her. Jaarin and Rinchei had only just begun treating her like they weren't sick of her presence. Kids at school had stopped picking on her after she had begun standing up for herself and acting like she wasn't perpetually stuck in kindergarten. Somewhere inside her there might always be a part of her that was hurt, sad and alone. Maybe she couldn't fix that. Even her idol, the Digimon Queen Rika, still had her problems at the end of the day. Suzie knew she couldn't be perfect.

But she could keep her problems from being exposed.


	2. Corner

**Author's Note:** I'm doing these as I write them, so expect sporadic updates of varying length. I'm trying not to do any super short chapters, though.

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**Theme Two: Corner**

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It's hard not to feel like she's backed into a corner.

She can't fail them now. People are starting to slowly admit she may not be an idiot. People are treating her like a real person and if she slips they'll go right back to ignoring her all over again. Her father actually pinned her last test to the fridge with a magnet. He's proud of her for something for real for once. He doesn't have to fake that he's impressed with her drawings or some such thing; she really did something genuinely well. She can't let him down. Suzie has seen it, has seen her teacher and her mother exchange happy smiles that she's finally becoming a better student. She wants them to smile like that more often. She wants them to really think she's special. She can't mess up on anything or they'll go back to groaning whenever she enters the room. A headache, the teacher once called her. That's all anyone's ever thought she was.

Suzie will show them, she _will_. She isn't a failure. She isn't a moron. She's worth just as much as Jaarin, who can play every sport imaginable with amazing skill, and Rinchei, who has a gift for languages. The red-violet haired girl wants to prove she's not the useless sibling. She's smart. She's worth something. She has a talent. Something inside her wants to see her father not have to force a smile and a worthless fake compliment. She wants to make him proud. When he found out Henry was a hero he was positively shining with pride at what Henry had accomplished. One day when he sees that she's a responsible Tamer he'll give her that look and everything broken in her will be mended forever. One day she will come home after a long battle, hand her mother a good test and both her parents will love her. For just a moment she'll feel like she's worth something.

She is stuck in a vortex of trying to act like she doesn't care when she does. Oh, she _aches_ with it, with anxiety and eagerness to please. She wants so very much to be popular, to have friends, to be the teacher's favorite – to have someone, somewhere, treat her like she's not a nuisance. That is all she lives for. When the girly girls talk about her hair behind her back she listens and later adjusts it accordingly, settling on a single side bun that gets her compliments on her 'fashionable asymmetry'. She had no idea what those words mean, but people aren't snickering about her girlish pigtails, so she must be doing something right. Suzie rolls her eyes at people who mock her, at the kids who still think she's a baby, but secretly she's infuriated. She isn't a little dolt for them to pick on. She's a Tamer, a nearly grown up chosen one, and she'll show them just how grown up she is by rolling her eyes at them and walking away. Just like her mother told her to, Suzie Wong knows how to be the bigger person. It's not what they think that hurts, it's whether or not her mother is proud of her for not getting into the fight. She cares and she doesn't. It's complicated.

But her efforts are yielding results, slowly. Rinchei actually defended her when his friends mocked her. He said she had changed and for their information she spoke two languages and was getting very good at English. Unlike them, he added with a grin, who had managed to fail their English exam despite extensive tutoring. And they had been so offended by his comment that she had managed to sneak away without being noticed or harassed. Rinchei was, for the first time in his life, taking a shine to her. Ever since she had dedicated herself to catching up on her kanji and learning English better he had finally found common ground with her. That common ground was what they were building a new relationship on, one where she wasn't the whiny brat he barely tolerated but a companion he enjoyed spending time with. His help was invaluable, not just to her grades, to her happiness. She would win over her family yet. If she could get the approval of her nerdy brother, who interests included model planes and linguistics, of all things, surely she could get everyone else to like her. It would be a slow process, yet she was sure it could be done.

The pressure was all self inflicted. And it was mounting. She didn't want to let them all down. She had learned that doing certain chores made her mother exceedingly happy. Getting good grades made her father notice her as something other than the village idiot. Rinchei had become her friend once she'd begun taking languages seriously. All of these were things that had to be tended to, watched closely, and followed up. She couldn't slip up, not now, or they'd never take her seriously again. If she failed now they'd think her brief moments of competence were all flukes and chalk it up to luck. She didn't want that. For the first time in her life Suzie actually talked to her family and was taken seriously. Before they'd let everything she said go in one ear and out the other. Of course they had. She'd been a hyper active moron with no sense of when to stop. And they didn't say it, but they all held that image of her in their minds still. All it would take was one screw up for her to be demoted back down to the family pest. The pressure was on to rise above that, to become something greater, someone better. She was a hero, a Tamer, and Tamers didn't play with dolls and cry when they scrapped their knees.

It's intimidating, this knowledge that she'll have to earn the basic respect everyone else gets by default. She's starting from less than scratch. She's got nothing to be proud of yet. She has no skill or talent of her own. All she has is past mistakes that she has to make up for. Underneath the mask she's just a little girl who wants to be liked. Before, she didn't realize how much people despised her. Not that she blames them. She just wants to change. She doesn't want people's faces to fall when they see they're partnered with her. She doesn't want the students in her class to groan when she raises her hand. Suzie wants her answers to be right so that they'll not care if she raises her hand. All she wants is to be treated like any other kid instead of as a burden. She knows that she has a long way to go before anyone gets over her past babyish behavior. And she reached for her Digivice, kept on her at all times, and draws strength from it.

Nobody puts a Tamer into a corner.


	3. Presence

**Author's Note:** Much love for the fastest reviewer ever! I felt greatly complimented by such a quick response and such quick praise. Way to make my day. Not to say that the later reviewers don't mean anything, they do. I was just more startled by the first one, that's all. I'm used to other fandoms where reviews take a week or two to get.

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**Theme Three: Presence**

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The after affects of Lopmon's presence were still manifesting.

Suzie was learning to speak properly. She wanted to speak like her partner did, with dignity and grace. Lopmon knew lots of big words that Suzie didn't. She was refined and poised and all those other things people said when they met royalty. That was the kind of elegance Lopmon had. She was like a real princess, not a fairy tale one. So Suzie began to relearn how to talk altogether, carefully forming her words and making sure to pronounce things like a big girl instead of a little one. This was, hands down, the hardest thing she'd done yet. It was a slow process, relearning everything she had once known. She could no longer giggle and mispronounce her r's. It wasn't cute and it was making people think she was stupid. When Lopmon opened her mouth everyone knew how smart she was. Everyone respected her from the start. That was what Suzie wanted. She wanted to be as cool and intelligent as her best friend because Lopmon was both smart and kind. She had never rubbed Suzie's nose in it that the digimon was so much smarter than her.

Lopmon was awesome like that. She was kind as could be, with the patience of the saint. How could anyone not love Suzie's partner? The little girl would never understand people who didn't like digimon. Sure there were bad ones, but there were also ones that were like Lopmon, and they made up for it completely. Suzie had tried to get her partner to relax and play more. Now, in retrospect, she wanted to be mature and serious like her friend was. Everyone admired Lopmon's manners and attitude. Suzie wanted to be cool like that. If only there was a way to be just like that all at once, instead of having to work at it every day until it became second habit. It was frustrating sometimes how hard she had to work at being cool and collected like Lopmon. The pink and brown bunny made it all look so easy and effortless. Suzie really admired that about her.

Of course, Suzie still thought her digimon was perfect. She didn't see anything but her own flaws. If she'd been a better Tamer things would've been so much easier. Now, though, she had the motivation. She'd become the best Tamer in the world and make Lopmon proud. She'd make her best friend so strong no one could ever take them down. One day she and Lopmon would fight evil together and become unstoppable forces for good because Lopmon was wise and Suzie was energetic. They were the brain and the doer, the action and the thought. Still, it couldn't hurt to become smarter, could it? Lopmon had been so nice to her even when everybody else had been so mean to Suzie all the time. Helping her out in return was the least she could do for someone like Lopmon. Friends like that didn't come around every day. Maybe Lopmon was a little too serious, but she understood Suzie. She treated her like a friend and she loved her unconditionally despite all their differences in maturity and personality. For someone like that Suzie could change anything about herself, because a good friend worked at being good to make the other person happy. Or something like that. It made better sense in her head.

She was trying to figure out what she should wear as a Tamer. Rika looked so cool and tough, and Henry managed to look utterly business-like in his somber colors. Kazu had a T-shirt with the crest of hope from the TV show. Kenta had recently acquired one with the crest of reliability. They looked official, so super heroic, and Suzie wanted to be like them. At the heart of it all she was still a little kid, and what kid didn't dream of being the hero? She looked through her clothes thoughtfully. Nothing she could get tangled or snagged on anything. Her mother would be really mad at her and it would slow down Lopmon, too. Something with a jacket, maybe, for winter. Bad guys didn't stop just because it got cold and neither would she. Maybe she should find some boots so she could go through puddles and yucky places. Was that why super heroes wore boots? Suddenly that made a great deal more sense. Huh. Who knew being a hero was so hard?

Eventually she decided to get a coat the same color of brown as Lopmon's fur. Well, okay, it was a little darker, but it was close. And it was very grown up looking. Her mother was proud she was getting out of the accursed pink phase she'd been in for so long and Suzie was just happy that it fit. Sometimes at night, when no one else was up, she would put it on and think of her partner. One day, she told herself, someday soon they'd be together again. Lopmon probably missed her just as badly. Maybe they could sleep in the same bed again, even though Henry and their parents would think that was immature. Well, they didn't need to know. Suzie didn't have to be grown up all the time, just in front of them so that they liked her. But behind closed doors she'd always be her partner's best friend and other half. She clutched the coat closer to her, forcing herself not to cry. Everything seemed so lonely since Lopmon had left. Lonely and hard. Life wasn't right without her here. Lopmon understood Suzie. Nobody else did. They thought they did, that they knew her, and they didn't. They thought she was a stupid-head and a crybaby. Wrapping her coat tighter around herself, the dark magenta haired girl sighed, looking out the window at the city. Someday she'd have to protect this city with her partner. She'd be ready for it. She could do anything so long as she had Lopmon by her side. She clutched her digivice to her chest, closing her rose-quartz eyes.

One day she'd make her presence known.


	4. Center

**Author's Note:** I'll address my reviewers here since not everyone likes PMs and this is faster. First off, to _Musical x Daydreams_, any review is welcome. I know some people act like if you didn't send in an epic length literary critique you've wasted their time, but I appreciate your thoughts no matter what they are. Reviews are a gift, not a requirement, and people who act otherwise are jerks.

Next, to _Scoobs 4 Eva_ – send me a link to your story when you write it! I love seeing people write for under used and overlooked characters and I'd love to see more work done in regards to Suzie. I feel really flattered that you said I inspired you and I want you to know that if you need a beta to check for grammar errors and spelling mistakes I'm always up for it.

_Star Owner:_ I'm not sure if I should apologize for making you cry or be complimented that I moved you that much. Either way, your continued lightning fast reviewing means a lot to me and I hope you like this new chapter.

To_ Rainbow 35_, I'd like to say that I checked with the main community I'm doing this for and found out the correct term. I thought stories in this format were a series of one shots, but according to a lot of other writers the right term is spotlight fic, as in Suzie has the spotlight right now. Apparently the term has been around since then 90's. So you made me learn something today. XD

Also, I hope all of you will accept my odd interpretation of center as a prompt. The Live Journal community I'm writing this for encourages odd takes on prompts - for instance some people wrote exposed as being about being naked and made it funny, some people wrote it about a secret being revealed, etc. So I tried to follow in the footsteps of my fellow writers and come up with a different way to use center than the obvious interpretations of the word. Tell me if you think it didn't work. I'm always open to constructive criticism and your general thoughts.

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**Theme Four: Center**

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There is a place Jaarin goes. It's called the 'Family Center', and it's all about athletics.

Suzie has seen her sister at work there. Jaarin is not like other girls. She is not demure and timid. She is bold and she is fierce. Suzie admired her from the first time she saw the dark haired girl play basketball. People don't understand how intensive sports are. They think people who play sports are tough idiots. Jaarin is at the top of her class. She has an interest in zoology that has led her to strive forward in her English, so she can study aboard and learn more about the creatures of the world. Her physical strength belies her true mind. She is no fool. She is smart, even if it's in one specialized area, and she is strong. Suzie thinks sometimes that her sister is the only one who truly resembles her in the family. No one understands Jaarin either.

Whenever Jaarin is at school people treat her like she's a shy wallflower. That's what they expect of nerds, right? They are utterly wrong. They take her note taking to mean she has no life outside of school and act as if her brain means she's a weakling. They mock her for doing well. She is the butt of endless jokes. The other girls are ruthless, their rumor mill and gossip getting more lewd with every passing year, and Jaarin responds by not responding. She's no weakling. She's also not an idiot. These people aren't worth fighting with. Anything she could do or say would make the teasing worse. So she stores it all up and lets it all out on the basketball court, in tennis matches, in bouts of soccer that leave her drained and coated in sweat.

Suzie thinks she understands. She knows they're very different people, but she understands nonetheless. She knows that no one ever forgets what you did. She knows that she'll never live down being a baby the same way Jaarin will never live down being a nerd. She knows what it's like to work hard and be nothing other than the kid or the nerd in the eyes of everyone else. Suzie knows what it is like to hold back tears because if you dared to let them fall the world would tear you apart. More than anything Suzie knows what its like to be alone at school, not disliked yet never part of the group. They are perpetually alone. No one is going to stand up for them if a bully corners them. They have to stand up for themselves. That's their life, always being put to the test.

Jaarin is a beautiful young woman. Her hair is dark magenta, darker than Suzie's, a shade close to black, and she wears it chin length. Her eyes are like obsidian orbs. They shine with a kind of passion when she's on the basketball court that takes Suzie's breath away sometimes. Her skin is pale and pristine. Often she moves so fast it's hard to keep track of her. Suzie wishes desperately to be like her sister so pretty and so skilled. Jaarin isn't just good at sports, she's smart as a whip. She's pretty. She's tall with good muscles and she has long fingered hands like Suzie. Maybe someday Suzie will be as amazing as her sister.

Maybe someday the boys will talk about her like they do her sister. They think she's mysterious and intriguing. They want to talk to her but can't get up the nerve. They marvel at her test scores and her basketball skills. Suzie is proud. She's proud that Jaarin can do all this. It means that no one can tell Suzie what she can't do. If her sister can do it she can too. If her brother can be a Tamer, her other brother can be a linguistic genius and her sister can be good at sports and zoology then Suzie can do anything. Her family is proof that from the exact same beginnings all kinds of amazing things can come out. She cheers and screams for her sister. The Family Center groups players by skill, not age. Jaarin has just beaten women in their twenties at their own game. She is fifteen. She holds her head high and looks directly at their father, as if daring him to say something. Some unspoken message passes between them. Then the moment is broken and she looks at Suzie with a genuine smile.

Suzie wonders if her sister and her father were always like this. There's an antagonistic edge to some of their words when they talk to each other. It's as if each child has to fight and claw for their parents' attention. Rinchei is interested in aviation and languages. Henry is a Tamer, a martial artist and a philosophical person. Jaarin is both athlete and scientist. Suzie has just been the baby. That's all she's ever been. The burden. The useless child. The one who everyone put up with. Now, however, she's a Tamer too and her chance has come. She's seen how her father feels obligated to come to these events and how he never misses a martial arts tournament. This is how to make their parents care. This is how they earn their love, she realizes. You have to be special. Like when Rinchei got to go to a special summer school where they trained beginning pilots. When he got his acceptance letter they all loved him for months. This is how it's done, she thinks, watching Jaarin bow to the opposing team and shake their hands in turn.

The youngest of the four Wong children knows she will never be anything but the baby, in the same way Jaarin is nothing but the nerd. No matter how hard they try they can't shake the past. Yet the future still lays ahead, unknown and uncertain. If she tries she knows she can become something special like her siblings. Not just like them, but something all her own. They are each skilled and incredible, unique and successful in their own ways. She clutches her digivice tighter in her coat pocket as she watches her sister wipe her face with a towel, exhausted and victorious.

"When is the Center accepting more kids?" Suzie asks Jaarin later that night, when they're back at their house. "I want to enroll."


	5. Kiss

**Author's Note:** I'm considering signing up to do twenty of these now instead of ten. I don't know if I'm up for that or if I'm in over my head, but it's tempting. But there's no in-between when it comes to this. There's no thirteen, no I got tired and did nineteen, there's ten or there's twenty. So I'm torn. What if I can't come up with anything for all the themes? What if I want to do more after ten? Ugh. I need to choose soon. Your thoughts, my readers? Don't be afraid to tell me what you really think; if you think ten is good enough characterization then say it. I understand.

Also, I used the Japanese word _nakama_ in this chapter. Its meaning is somewhere between family and friend. Your nakama are your friends that would die for you, lie for you, cry for you. They are as loyal to you as family. There's no real term for it in English other than BFF, which sounded far too superficial, so I broke fanfic taboo and added in the Japanese word. Forgive me; I know people hate over usage of Japanese in fanfic. I won't make a habit out of this, I promise. And I made up a surname for Ai and Mako. I couldn't find the real one. Sorry!

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**Theme Five: Kiss**

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Mako was the only boy Suzie ever wanted to kiss.

Makoto, affectionately known as Mako to friends and teachers and as Ko to Ai (and Impmon, in a life that seems long ago now) was not like other boys. There was something there, intangible and yet very real, that made him different from the rest. It was best represented in his eyes. The eyes were how Suzie would tell them apart even if Ai hadn't had a different hair style. Ai had eyes that were orange-brown, alive and vivid, full of emotion and life. They could burn like fire or glimmer like hope itself. Mako's eyes were a darker color, browner and less orange, though there were flecks of tangerine pigment around the pupils of his eyes. His eyes were more intense, watching, and contemplative. He was not his sister. People talked about twins as if they were one being; yet while Ai and Mako certainly got along far better than other twins, they weren't one. Ai was more social, a bit closer to Earth. Mako was a thinker and a dreamer.

They had some similarities. They were both passionate to a fault. Suzie pitied the bully that dared mess with one, because the two of them were not above fighting back as a tag team. Impmon had taught his partners to fight dirty, to kick at the groins of their opponents and throw dirt in the eyes and all the other things Rinchei and Henry's sensei would disapprove of. It worked, though it wasn't honorable, and two small children versus one big one was an uneven fight when the twins were involved. Suzie admired them. They were no one's victims. Ai and Makoto Enmori were never the cool kids – perhaps no Tamer really was except for Rika – but they could hold their own. Suzie liked them both tremendously. Ai was a very optimistic person. Mako was a dreamer. To him there was nothing that was impossible and in his rare dark moments Ai pulled him back from depression through sheer force of will. The twin Tamers weren't perfect, yet they were people Suzie was happy to say she would one day fight alongside.

Mako was more prone to see the darker side of things than Ai was. He was blunt and honest, and Suzie knew she could trust him. He said what he meant and meant everything he said. He didn't tell the white lies other people used to get through the day. Maybe this was his biggest flaw to other people. She didn't see it that way. Suzie liked that he refused to do the mean things they other boys did and she couldn't help smiling when he told the other kids how to reach their dreams. He was ambitious like his sister, he simply knew the realistic challenges that lay ahead. You have to practice every day to be a professional basketball player, he told a girl in his class named Rin. It'll be hard but you can do it if you never give up. That was who Mako was. He wouldn't lie and say everyone could do anything no matter what, he'd tell the truth and tell them how to reach their dreams. Firefighters, he said to a thoughtful gray eyed boy in Suzie's class named Kouta, have to be able to climb fast and climb great big heights. It'd be scary but it would save lives. And Kouta nodded at the sage wisdom and began learning how to move quickly up trees and playground equipment of all kinds.

That was who Mako was. Thoughtful. Hopeful. Above all, he was a friend. Ai was a friend to all people, too. She just talked to them all the time, said kind things and little white lies to everyone. Mako was a different kind of friend. Ai had smiled kindly and said of course Himami could be a police officer. Mako had helped her turn the playground into a make believe obstacle course just like the one real police cadets used. He was a helper, Suzie decided. He was a believer and a worker. She liked that. She had never known anyone else like that in her lifetime. There was something pure and good in his eyes that she trusted explicitly even before his actions backed up her perception of him. She didn't care if he was two years younger than her. He was amazing and she really cared about him, in part because he cared so much about her.

Who in Suzie's life had ever encouraged her? Who had ever cheered her on and helped her plan out what to do? Who else but Mako had ever really been interested in everything that she did? He cared about her and he took her seriously. That was the really amazing thing. He wasn't older like the other Tamers, so he didn't treat her like a baby. Nor did he treat her like a hero by virtue of the fact she was an older Tamer. They were just people to each other. They weren't anything but Mako and Suzie. They were real and honest with each other. Mako believed in her, not as the bratty kid who was moving out of her princess phase or as the child of a successful family. He believed in her as Suzie, as a person, as a friend. She didn't have to act grown up for him. She didn't have to act silly to make him like her. She could just _be_, just exist, just talk to him and it was so easy it was like they'd known each other forever and ever. Ai understood that while she and Suzie were friends, Mako and Suzie were _best_ friends. She was a good sister and she let them have their time together alone to hang out and talk about everything and nothing.

The kids at school had to make fun of her, of course. Suzie's got a crush, they taunted, and then they'd sing those stupid songs children do about marriage and kisses and all sorts of other things. Kouta had gotten angry at all the people mocking her and snapped that at least Suzie was capable of feeling love. He'd then accused one girl, a snide snob named Sayumi, of not loving her own parents. And in that moment Suzie realized she had friends. Mako and Ai had introduced her to people and somehow, some way she'd ended up with a small circle of friends who were determined to defend her. Suzie had never been able to make friends she didn't have to act like an idiot around before. She had never had someone stand up for her. In the moment where Himami and Kouta and Ai yelled things on her behalf it struck her that she had found something that had been missing all her life: real friends. Cold, sharp tongued Kouta who acted distant to hide the sweet loving boy he really was; Himami with her bravery and her endless jokes that made every day seem lighter; Ai, whose sweet and gentle soul held a core of fierce loyalty and love that enabled her to do incredible things. This was Suzie's _nakama_, her friends for life. She had never had this before. She only had it because Mako had timidly invited her over at lunch because they were both Tamers. Without him she would be alone and friendless and struggling through each school by all by herself. Her soul and heart were so much lighter now that she knew she wasn't alone. It was as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

When asked who she would kiss if she had to, she immediately said Mako, and no matter how much the kids teased her, she stood by it.

He'd earned it, after all, with all he'd done for her.


	6. Peace

**Theme Six: Peace**

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Suzie's definition of peace is different from that of other people's.

Peace to her is a lot of things. The first thing that comes to mind is sleep. Every other second of the day is spent working on something or another now. In her sleep she lays down her weary body. She is growing, as are all of her friends. She has grown an inch in two months. Why that takes so much out of her she isn't certain. She thinks it has more to do with what she's doing all the time. She has become a basketball player, and she can run for longer and faster than she ever could before in her life. Jaarin has been teaching her how to aim, how to coordinate her hands and eyes. There is a lot of running and jumping involved. It's tougher than it looks, Kouta remarks to her one day, and it already looked really, really hard. She agrees with that sentiment a lot, even if it gets Kouta a look from the coach. Not that black haired, gray eyed Kouta cares; he was just having fun in his own way. Himami laughs with him, understanding his humor better than anyone else.

What can't be denied is that her time at the Center will come in handy when she gets her partner back and she has to be a hero. She can't be out of shape. Too much is resting on her shoulders now. Suzie is somberly aware that she can't tell them that, that only Mako and Ai will understand. She keeps quiet. She has work to do. Lopmon, she thinks through gritted teeth as pain goes through her side like a knife, she has to keep running, just picture Lopmon held hostage. And in a burst of speed, she shoots past all the other girls, gaining an entire lap on them. The coach smiles at her. A new personal best. Suzie doesn't smile, breathing too hard for it, but Kouta tells her she was liked greasy lightning. And laughing while out of breath hurts, but she does it, falling over and getting Kouta reprimanded by the coaches present for disrupting practice.

That is peace. Kouta is peace. When he makes her laugh, even though he's so incredibly mean with his jokes sometimes, she feels it all melt away. She knows it's awful to laugh when he says these things. When the principal asked at an assembly what the most wonderful thing that could happen to the school was, Kouta had yelled, "You're tearing it down?!" with such joy and excitement that the whole auditorium laughed. That was Kouta. He is a bringer of laughter when he wants to be. He can insult people so viciously they sob uncontrollably or he can make them laugh so hard they fall over. And while it's not always entirely appropriate, perhaps it's a necessity. He makes things lighter by mocking them. He and Terriermon, she thinks, would be good friends and she makes a note to introduce them as soon as she can.

When Aomori Kouta isn't there to make her laugh, she finds that the most wonderful thing she can do is be with Mako. Not always playing, mind you. She likes to loop her arm through his and walk the streets with him, talking about Digimon and the Digital World and the difference between a digivice and a D-Arc. There's other things, too, things she only tells him and no one else, not even her family. She tells him about Jaarin and how they're always separated from the world. She tells him about Rinchei and how she's seen blood on his clothes a lot lately and how scared she is for him. And there is something that passes between Mako and Suzie in these moments that they cannot define. There is something forming, a bond, that cannot be broken by anyone or anything. She trusts him with every secret and every thought even if she hasn't told him all of them yet. She knows he can be counted on. He won't ever fail her. He has worked hard at growing up ever since Impmon left him, both the first and second time, that people often mistake him for being far older than he actually is. There is a peace that comes with knowing he is there for her, a peace that she clings to when she feels alone.

But how does Suzie define peace? She thinks of it as a state of just right. The mood is right, the problems are small or solved, the world is quiet, and there is hope. That is her peace. It is how she feels when she lays in her bed at night and holds her Lopmon-colored coat close to her. It is how she feels when she thinks about nothing, hums and does her hair. Peace is the calm that engulfs her in the moment when her big test is over. True serenity is that moment where she's in the shower and just letting the water run over her. There is no definition, just a series of warm moments she holds close to herself, moments she wraps herself in like a blanket. In between her endless hours of studying for school, studying up on digimon and sports, there is a lull. That lull is peace. Having done everything she needs to do and being able to rest for a few seconds is peace. Knowing what the schedule for tomorrow is and what is to come is peace.

Waking up to a phone call from Kouta at four in the morning, hearing that he had gotten a D-Arc last night, after a dream with a Betamon in it? That is the anti-peace. That is terror and hope blended together into both fear of what could be coming and dreams of the future. That is the moment Suzie gets dressed in the dark with the phone to her shoulder, puts on her brown coat and manages the early morning subway on her own just to see it for herself. It is a moment both adult in how she does so calmly and easily and childish in that she just left without telling anyone. Henry doesn't need to know about this. He'd only get in the way and treat Kouta just like he'd always treated Suzie, as a nuisance and a problem. He could find about this later, if at all.

Kouta is a Tamer. She knows she is. She sees it, suddenly. Ai and Mako are Friendship and Hope, she's probably either Love or Light, Himami is Courage, and Kouta is Sincerity incarnate. The knowledge hits her like a freight train. He dreamed of a Betamon lost at sea, looking for his partner. He tried so hard to swim over to him and couldn't, stuck forever farther away from him. Kouta doesn't lie. He says he cried about it in his dream. She sees tear stains on his cheeks. His D-Arc is pastel green where hers is pink. He wants to know what it means. And suddenly she has to be the leader, has to be the responsible one. Suddenly she missed playing Princess Pretty Pants and flopping around on the couch.

Because suddenly, as all semblance of peace leaves her, she has a feeling that good time is gone and won't be coming back.


	7. Dirt

**Theme Seven: Dirt**

* * *

They had, Suzie discovered, all apparently decided she was leader.

That was really intimidating and terrifying. She didn't show that, oh, no, she was smarter than that now, but she certainly felt it. Himami had a nightmare where she was trying to save a Kunemon from being eaten by a shadowy digimon she couldn't identify. It had fallen off a cliff and she had leapt after it. She'd almost gotten a hold of her partner when her parents woke her up. The blonde girl was upset, that much was clear on her face as she gazed down at her D-Arc. Her dark gold-green eyes were worried. Her D-Arc was trimmed in pastel blue. It didn't surprise Suzie that the girl had been brave enough to leap from the cliff after her Kunemon. That was just who Himami _was_. She would do anything to help people, even people she didn't know. Currently she was sporting a nasty bruise for standing up for a younger boy against his abusive older brother; the school was still sorting that affair out as they spoke. There was nothing odd about her friends, Suzie decided, there was just an awful lot of weirdness to this situation.

Focus. They were relying on her. She had to be good. She had to be a leader. She wasn't allowed to be afraid or confused. All the fears came rushing back at her, the fear of losing her nakama, of being thought of as a scared little girl, of being told she was useless and weak. Her rose-quartz eyes hardened into an authoritative glare. She stood up straight, her hair perfectly done into a single neat bun on the left side of her head and her clothes spotless. Lopmon and the Digital World might be hanging in the balance. She could panic later. She could be the scared child in the safety of her bedroom late at night. Now was the time to be a grown up or die trying. She held her D-Arc tightly in her own hand, surveying her team of four with keen interest. Ai and Mako had awoken to the buzzing of their purple D-Arc and a voice saying one word: "Soon." What that meant, Suzie didn't know. She didn't let on that she didn't know, however, and she didn't let on that her own D-Arc's glow had lit up the room when she'd been woken up. Instead she looked them over. Mako was contemplative and his expression was both thoughtful and anticipatory. Ai was optimistic, plainly hoping for her partner, her eyes lighting up like orange topazes in a jewelry store display. Himami and Kouta were uncertain and lost. They had never thought this would be their fate.

Suzie was lost, too. She just didn't show it. She had to be tough. She knew no fear, she reminded herself, even though new Tamers might mean something bad was coming. She was brave and bold and not scared in the least. When her traitorous knees shook anyway she had simply sat down. Be smart and calm like Henry, she had told herself. Be light hearted and nice like Takato. Be tough and fearless like Rika. How hard could it be to explain something she didn't understand? Adults lied like this all the time, right? This should be easy. She met their eyes in turn, trying to think of something to say. She wasn't some little kid anymore. She was a big girl now. Time to deliver some harsh news and step up to the challenge she'd been preparing herself for. All this constant work she'd been doing at the Center and at school had been leading up to her becoming the kind of Tamer who could be put in charge and not fail. She was not afraid. She was not uncertain or lost.

She was lying through her teeth to claim she knew any more than the other children did.

"The Tamers first came into being," she had started quickly, hurriedly, letting a hint of nervousness show, "When wild digimon were coming through to our world. The Tamers had to be around to stop people from getting hurt. They were destined to exist, though, to fight the greater evil. The D-Reaper." She fought down the urge to say stupid childish things like the big meanie, the big monster, and more than anything she fought not to look afraid. She could tell she was failing. Forcing herself to sound more like know-it-all Rika, she had continued after a brief pause. "More Tamers means something is coming. Something bad. We will have to learn to work together and fight like Takato, Rika and my brother did. No fighting with each other and no more starting arguments, Kouta. We have to take this seriously or people could die."

She'd always accused her brother of deliberately scaring her. He always made everything sound worse than it was to freak her out. He had told her she'd choke to death if she wore necklaces. He'd told her she'd break a leg if she tried skating. He had made sure she knew she was in danger of getting into a lethal car accident if she rode her bike. She'd always promised herself not to be like that when she got older. Instead she'd become just like him, manipulative yet honest. Suzie could feel something within her spit upon this kind of behavior. She fought the urge to wince. All four of her friends were hanging onto her every word. She was in charge and she had never intended to be, but she was going to try to do something good with it.

"We all need to learn about the Digimon card game. We can use the cards to help our partners. And we should all try to keep a lookout for wild digimon who might enter our world. They don't mean any harm sometimes, but they can't help it. I mean, Meramon is on fire. He melts the road wherever he walks. Things like that happen and can really wreck the town unless we stop it. We're the protectors of our world now. It'll be hard, but we can do it. There's a lot more of us than there was last time, and if the others get their digimon there will be more Tamers than ever before. There's no problem we can't face with all of them backing us up." She smiled that sweet, convincing little girl smile as she lied. "We'll be fine." No, they wouldn't. They were little kids and she was in charge and she wasn't ready. "So long as we have our D-Arcs and our partners we'll be safer than we've ever been.

She felt dirty even saying it.


	8. Hypocrisy

**Theme Eight: Hypocrisy**

* * *

Suzie feels like a hypocrite.

It's a huge word for the nine year old, but Kouta was the one who knew it first and taught it to her. His father, a radio host with a flair for insults, had taught the boy his entire arsenal of big words and snappy comebacks and Kouta had inherited his father's ability to make things up on the spot. She's learned a lot of words she probably shouldn't know from him. The pale kid is a walking dispenser of mean spirited vocabulary. Suzie reaches over and pulls Kouta's hair into a ponytail out of sheer habit. Her friend doesn't mind the familiar touch. She's been trying to get him used to the hair style so that in battle his hair won't get in the way and he'll be safe. Plus, should he and his aquatic partner end up in the water, it'll be a lot less tangled afterward. He wonders if Betamon would be allowed into the pool at the Center. If not, maybe he could bribe the lifeguards once he proved a digimon like that just wanted to swim. It's a theory he bats around lightly while everyone else grows increasingly serious.

Henry doesn't know about the D-Arcs. Or the dreams, or the voice in the night that whispers to the five of them, or the way they've all been gathering and preparing for the future. All of them have spent themselves broke on cards and books. They gather at Kouta's house to talk about how they'll work together and what they'll do. They're all filled with child like excitement and anticipation. Even Suzie, as hard as she works at being serious, can't manage to keep herself from smiling at the thought of what will happen. Then she gets home and realizes she's still lying to Henry. None of the original Tamers know what's happening. They don't have a clue that 'soon' something big is going to go down. They all trust her, think she's honest and too immature to keep a secret. She's still a little kid to them and that's what little kids do, right, they _talk_. They spill the beans. They blurt it all out. Surely if something big were going on they'd all know it, right?

They're wrong, of course. She finds she no longer has to work at keeping her mouth shut. All the time and effort put into relearning how to speak without sounding like an idiot has made her think before she speaks. She won't be called stupid again. Suzie finds her determination to be respected has made her no longer as impulsive. It helps tremendously when it comes to not spilling her secret. _Their_ secret, actually. None of them have told their parents. Only Suzie's parents even know she's a Tamer at all. Partly it's because she's sworn all of them to secrecy and anyone who's met small children can tell you how seriously they take secrets. In part the reason no one knows is that she's afraid of what will happen if they're told. They will be told they're useless, that they can't do anything, that they won't be able to handle it, and then Henry and the others will force them to stay behind as if they're made of glass and might break if they move. Suzie knows how much it hurts to be doubted like that. She doesn't want her friends to feel that pain and rejection.

She doesn't lie. She never tells the truth. She just goes about her normal life as if everything is fine and nothing is happening when in reality everything is spiraling out of control. Late at night she stays up reading on digimon biology and the in-game manuals for digimon. She drinks tea made Chinese style, puts her favorite Liu Yi Fei CD on repeat all and she waits. Suzie waits with a mixture of nervousness and excitement. The future could hold anything and that makes her wants to shout. Some part of her wants to tell everyone just how amazing it is to be a Tamer, to have that connection, to be one of the chosen ones. She wants to tell Henry that the voice selected her friends because they're all good people, using that tone of voice Kouta's mastered that implies 'you're not a good person and that's why you were left out'. She wants to look at all the people who made fun of her and say ha, look at who's the boss now. Suzie has been given a chance to have her precious partner, he best friend, her nakama of one back, and that thought is empowering.

Still it remains a secret. For all those times she demanded Henry tell her everything that was happening, for all those arguments over him withholding information from her, at the end of the day here she was very purposefully not talking to him. What's more, ultimately it was for the same reason. It would be easier for him if he didn't know. He'd worry himself sick if he knew. He was stressed with school enough as it was. His life was full, his schedule was crowded and underneath it all she still loved him. Some part of her hadn't forgiven him for treating her like an idiotic baby, and she'd be lying if she said she didn't hold a grudge, but she loves him. He's not a bad person. He made some mistakes that were well intentioned and the best he could do at the time. Some part of her just wants him to stay out of this so he won't have to be in any danger.

And if that's hypocritical, well, so be it.


	9. Stone

**Author's Note:** A shout out to my freakishly fast and lovably dedicated reviewer, Star Owner, whose reviews for each chapter are always insightful and interesting. And special mention goes to Rainbow 35, whose made me think about it and decide to expand this thing to twenty chapters. I hope you'll all continue reading, even if this fic is a little dark and Suzie is changing so much from the character we all know and love.

Quick basic Mandarin crash course note: I think I figured out what the original series was going for with Suzie's Chinese name, they just spelled it wrong in katakana. And I came up with an actual Chinese name for Rinchei and Jaarin based on the fact that a lot of names get changed between the two countries and there were perfectly valid names that were just a little bit off from their Japanese spellings. I know this is a nerdy thing to do, but I aim to be culturally sensitive as best as I can.

And a translation of the words at the end – wo ai ni is 'I love you'. Ye means 'also'. I think that's all you'll need to know. :)

* * *

**Theme Nine: Stone**

* * *

Suzie was staring at the stone tiles on the hospital floor and thinking.

She'd been doing a lot of that lately. She had never been a particularly thoughtful person, but being a Tamer changed people. It had turned Rika from a complete loner into a powerful ally, made Takato learn to be firm and commandeering, and Henry had found new philosophical depths. The experience even managed to age Ai and Mako, who were younger than any of the other Tamers when they got their digimon. The responsibility could bring out the best in people or the worst they had to offer. Suzie wasn't quite sure what it was doing to her. She had become a completely different person altogether. It happened through sheer force of will, yet now she doesn't like it or want it. Everything has changed, shifted out from under her. Nothing was familiar or right anymore.

In the shiny granite trimming the counter tops of the hospital waiting room, she caught a glimpse of her reflection. She was not the person she had once been. Her hair is tightly bound into a single bun, two twin strands of hair framing her face. Her cheeks no longer were flushed with the blush of a girly girl like they had once been. Suzie had to admit to herself that she looked older, and some part of her disliked that fact tremendously. This is not who she is, a part of her said firmly. Suzie wasn't sure if that was true or not. Maybe, more accurately, this wasn't who Suzie was, this was who someone else was. Suzie was the baby, the favored child, the giggling little girl. That persona would always be a part of her, but it was no longer her. She was someone else, someone no better or worse, just different altogether.

Shuichon. The Japanese rendering of her Chinese name, Shuchun. She had forgotten all about it, that her real name was different. It sounded so much less girly and goofy than her nickname. Suzie was the name of a little girl who cried when Terriermon left, who played with dolls and wore lots of pink. Shuichon was the name of someone who was a Tamer, a hero, a leader and a grown up. She closed her eyes, picturing herself as Shuichon in her head. That was the name of a really tough person. Lopmon would like it. She wished Lopmon was here right now to make all this make sense and to explain why she was selfishly thinking about herself when Rinchei was the one in the hospital. Maybe it was that she couldn't handle the reality of what was happening. Maybe it was easier to think about names and D-Arcs rather than what's happened. After all, she can read a few books and be a better Tamer. Fixing her family's problems was a lot more complicated than that. The nurse interrupts her thoughts by saying they can go see him now. Jaarin took Suzie by the hand and wrapped an arm around Henry like she was supporting him, egging him onward.

The first thing they noticed, the thing no one had prepared Suzie for, was the marks. Bloody cuts and scratches criss-crossed the arms of her oldest brother. Two deep cuts straight down the left wrist had left him weak and mandated a blood transfusion. They stood there for a moment, and at nine, thirteen and fifteen they were all equally speechless, all uncertain and hesitant. Jaarin had been the one to find him. She'd been the one to call for an ambulance. She had seen the blood up close and personal; she'd cradled her brother in her arms, holding him close and lapsing into Cantonese to keep him from fading away. Suzie remembered only coming home to Henry blocking her from the sight, shaking so badly that she worried he might pass out. She had seen true fear in his eyes for the first time since the D-Reaper. This was a problem the heroes of the Wong family could not solve. They were powerless to do anything but watch. Only Jaarin, with her knowledge of biology and her steadiness in times of crisis, had been able to save Rinchei from dying. In the process things had been altered forever. There was a way the two eldest siblings looked at each other that made Suzie feel like she was intruding on a private moment. Jaarin moved closer, eyes filled with a thousand conflicting emotions as she let down of her younger sibling and whispered, "Rinchei."

"Jaarin, you saved me." He was talking about more than saving his life, Suzie sensed. There was something more, something deeper going on here that she didn't fully understand. He and Jaarin were locked into some kind of vortex of meaning and emotion and significance that was purely their own. Jaarin's footsteps were like thunder on the stone tile. The world had gone silent. "Why did you do it?"

Again there was more, there's something _it_ referred to that Suzie and Henry weren't aware of. The word hung like a knife in the air. Jaarin leaned down by Rinchei's bed, brushing his hair out of his face. She had to pause a moment, but she didn't have to let her hand linger on her brother's cheek. That act was deliberate and conscious. The touch said she was still here, that she wasn't mad at him, that she wasn't ashamed of what he had done or tried or however he wanted to phrase it. Her eyes were filled with tears. Jaarin never cried. Suzie could never remember her sister crying, ever, under any circumstances. Now the older girl took a deep breath and she let the tears fall. Her hand was still on Rinchei's cheek and their eyes were locked. The other two kids may as well have not existed. They were like flies on the wall, intruders into something deeper than they could understand.

"Wo ai ni," she whispered intensely. Her other hand reached out to grab his. She looked into his eyes with such rawness that the other two children looked away. This was not meant for their ears. "Wo ai ni Wenchang." His real left her mouth like a half whispered prayer. Her eyes pleaded for him to say something in return, anything at all. After a moment, he placed his other hand on top of their intertwined ones.

"Wo ye ai ni, Jie Rin."

And the only way Suzie keeps from sobbing at the intensity of it all is by looking at the sleek gray stone walls.


	10. Quiet

**Author's Note:** For a change pace, this chapter is mostly dialogue with some poignant silence. Here's hoping it doesn't suck. Also, continued thanks to my reviewers. Your speed and diligence would make a super hero proud. And if that doesn't make sense, forgive me. I've been reading a lot of Batman fanfic lately, so I'm a bit off.

* * *

**Theme Ten: Quiet**

* * *

"So Suzie-"

"Shuichon," she corrected dully, looking at him without any discernable expression on her face. "Not Suzie. Only my family and _friends_ can call me that." The way she said the word friends implied very heavily that he was not one of her friends. He was nothing more than a psychologist to her. And she didn't just roll her eyes at the offer of candy, she gave him a look that implied he was an idiot. "No, thanks. I'm not three." The unspoken implication that he was the immature one cut through the room like a throwing star.

He shifted in his chair. "Shuichon," he amended. "How do you feel about what Rinchei did?"

"He'll be fine." She replied thoughtfully. "He has Jaarin. It's going to be alright. They're…"

The psychologist, Dr. Yamada, looked genuinely interested. "They're what?" he asked, and for a moment she met his eyes and saw something in there. He cared. He wanted to understand the family to make sure this didn't happen again. So she continued.

"They're partners, like Henry and Terriermon, Lopmon and I, like our parents are for each other. They used to be, anyway. They were close. Now they are again. So it'll be okay." She looked at the table solemnly. "So long as they have each other they'll make it."

"Do you think it was them not being close that caused this?" He had avoided using the words suicide attempt ever since Rinchei was admitted to the hospital. Those words sound too clinical and after school special. He used other terms. He treated this like it mattered. Perhaps that was why Suzie had agreed to talk to him at all. He wanted only to stop this from reoccurring. "What happened to them that divided them?"

"It's not something I can share. That's their secret."

A sigh. Frustrated, he looked at her imploringly. "Suzie – I mean, Shuichon. Please. I'm just trying to help, but I need to know what's going on."

"It's a secret."

She was not as mature as he thought she was. He could feel the way she was beginning to back up, avoid letting him in. For a few moments she had let him have a glimmer of the truth, phrased awkwardly and childishly. He could not decode what she meant. He wanted to. He wanted to make sure that everything was alright, that the family would pick themselves back up after this, that Rinchei was truly recovering. But she wouldn't let him have the pieces of the puzzle. He gazed at her, suddenly very tired and feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on. Her eyes were pink-taupe and steady.

"It's not my secret to tell. Why do grown ups have to try to know everything? They're getting along now. They're friends again. They don't fight over the milk and Jaarin turns down her music when Rinchei asks and they even played Digimon Explorer: Part Sixteen: The Brave New World: The Attack of The Seventy Foot Kunemon together." She tilted her head at him. "Why can't you just let them have fun?"

"Worry. Fear. I don't…" he tried to explain the stress of being a psychologist. "I don't want something terrible to happen and know I had a chance to stop it, and I didn't. I don't want to get a phone call one day saying Rinchei's dead because then every night I'll lay awake knowing that if I'd just questioned you more thoroughly he'd be alive."

"Doctor Yamada…" She gave him a look that was part pity and part reassurance. "That's not going to happen. Not this time, not with those two. They're closer than they've ever been before. All of us are. Henry and I have been playing games with them, like we all did when we were littler. We're not bestest friends, but we're working on it." She reached over and touched his hand. "It's going to be okay this time. I promise."

"It's my job to make sure everything's okay. I haven't always been successful." He rubbed his head, glancing wearily at the clock. "I just want everyone to keep on living, and to be happy and healthy and sane. It's my job. That means sometimes I have to know people's secrets, Shuichon. Do you know why? It's because people can't see their own problems very well. We can always see other people's problems far more clearly than our own. Humans always have been better at helping other people than helping themselves. That's why compassion is so important. That's why I became a psychologist. I want to help people. No matter what horrible secrets I have to hear or what nightmares people have to share with me."

"You don't need to know these nightmares. The problem's over." She smiled faintly. "To quote my friend Kouta, the only problem left is whether tacos or nachos are better." Suzie's smile faded. "I know you want to make sure we're all okay, and it's your job to be nosey. I know you have to be a busybody to help people. It's a weird job, but I get it. I just don't think you want to know all the stuff behind this. The thingy's over. There's no problem left to solve."

The girl looked so utterly convinced of her own words that the dark haired doctor felt a twinge of reassurance. Her confidence was contagious. But there was something bothering her, something unrelated lurking beneath the surface. Years of experience had taught Dr. Yamada how to see the tension and thoughts of people written and displayed in every action. For a moment they just looked at each other, both lost in their thoughts. Suzie had to say she liked this psychologist a lot more than the other ones she'd seen at the hospital and he seemed nice. She thought he'd made a good daddy to some lucky kid. It was about then that he noticed her D-Arc around her neck. The silence stretched. Finally, the tense child asked a question.

"What would happen if… if I just vanished one day? Would that make Rinchei want to… again?" she asked uneasily, shifting and squirming, clearly not liking to even think about this. The words had to be forced out. She clutched her D-Arc. "Henry and I could have to leave at any time, any day, and we might not get a warning, Mr. Yamada. We aren't going to get to call home or anything. So what if one of us vanishes? What if we both do?" Then, softer, just above a whisper, she asked, "What if we don't come back?"

He said nothing.

In that quiet moment, watching the emotions on the doctor's face, Suzie truly knew what fear was.


	11. Smile

**Theme Eleven: Smile**

* * *

Himami has never been loved, or cherished, or held close by a hysterical parent.

She has never seen her mother's face. She could not pick her father out of a line up even though they supposedly share the same house. She knows how to prepare her own meals and clean the house. She knows she will never have to plead with anyone to stay home when she's sick. She will never wake up or come home and smell something delicious baking. She has never had a sibling to hold her close and tell her it will be alright. She has not known the embrace of another human being in a very, very long time. She has never climbed into the bed of her parents after a nightmare. There's never been a happy Christmas where she woke up with her heart hammering in her chest to see what she'd been given. She doesn't know what it's like to hold someone's hand and walk down the street together like it's the most natural thing in the world.

She always wanted that life. She just never said anything. She likes to hide all the loneliness with lots of laughter and lame puns, jokes and random comments that made people think she was wacky and silly. That way people wanted to be with her. That way she doesn't have to feel alone in a crowd. She wants to be part of a group so desperately that sometimes she's sure it shows. She's just so tired of coming home to an empty apartment and instant noodles. She's tired of the way the lock on the door clinks and clicks at her as if it knows she shouldn't be the only one to steadily occupy the building. Honestly she's even tired of not cleaning her room and cleaning it. No matter what she does, no one is there to stop her. Himami could eat her weight in cookies and no one would know or care. No parent or snot nosed jerk of a sibling is going to come in and stop her. There's no punishment coming for her. She's always alone. Kids say they'll be her friend, they take goofy pictures, exchange phone numbers, and then time passes and they tire of her. Like an old toy, she is thrown aside. All that remains is a few old photos stuck in a shoebox under her bed.

Suzie is the only one who has ever stood by her. Suzie has the opposite problem, too many siblings, nagging parents, and thus it's too crowded at her house to hold Tamer meetings. Her house is small and cramped, overflowing with voices and noise. A pang of longing hits Himami in the chest when she visits, but her spirits soar when her friends decide to come to her house. Suzie orders them all into it, and no one wants to argue with the bossy Chinese girl, who has never outgrown her booming voice from her early Tamer days. They show up to a place that rapidly becomes their home, their hide out when they're all in trouble, their place. And Suzie is there the most, always talking. The youngest Wong child is a very strange girl. She acts as grown up as she can around the adults and around the other kids, but some part of her is still soft and sweet. She is kind. She makes cookies, talks, asks the questions about Himami's family that no one has bothered to ask for a long time. No one else has ever cared. No one else would notice if Himami slipped off the face of the Earth.

After a few weeks the apartment begins to have a smell. For a long time it was clinical and clean, like a hotel or a stage set. Too neat, too tidy, yet not bad, just… off. Now there are smells. The incense that Mako steals from his grandmother to burn to make things smell cozy lingers in the air long after he leaves. Kouta smells like cigarettes because his father smokes, and after a while the coat closet smells pleasantly of that after-odor. Suzie brings cookies, she makes them, sometimes in the shape of katakana to spell out people's names or just to play with. She has her childish side after all, and it shows in the flowers she picked idly on her way here and the way she smiles at Himami's collection of hair clips. Pretty soon they begin leaving their things at her house. Coats, books, cards, the occasional piece of trash. The couches get dents from where Kouta jumps on them just because he can't at home. The carpet gets stained from a memorable occasion where they turned off all the lights and had an all out pillow fight with every stuffed animal and pillow in the apartment. There's crayon on her room's wall where Ai drew a mural, pictures of all kinds of digimon and flowers across the dull white paint.

For the first time in her life she feels like she has a home. Himami doesn't know what to say when Suzie shows up for the younger girl's birthday with a cake in her arms. She doesn't know how to put into words what Suzie has done for her, what she's saved her from. Before Suzie and the other Tamers came into her life Himami had no one to talk to, no one to confide in, no one to laugh with or cry with. No one would have noticed if she died. No one would have cared if she vanished. Now? Suzie is standing in front of her with a childish smile that comes from another lifetime, a lifetime spent in pigtails being ignored and alone in a crowded house instead of an empty one, and something passes between them then. Himami sees for the first time that nakama isn't a pretty word in plays. It's real. This is her nakama, her family, her true one that will never leave her alone for months without so much as a phone call. Once the cake is set down Himami embraces Suzie tightly, burying her face in the older girl's shoulder, and at first Suzie thinks there's something wrong because the blonde in crying. But there's a smile on her face, and these are happy tears.

Himami is loved.


	12. Daydream

Author's Note: Aaaand I'm back! Sorry for the delay. I have too many fics going at once, it seems. XD

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**Theme: Daydream**

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There were times where she could daydream.

It was all the freedom she was really allowed now. If she had run around singing or making airplane noises with her arms flared out they'd all mock her for the rest of her life. All the progress she'd made towards making people take her seriously would be undone. People would treat her like a baby again if she played like she used to. She'd be idiotic and immature Suzie the kid sister forever if she ran around smiling and blushing all the time. Every time she started to miss playing Princess Pretty Pants or pretending to be Terriermon or any of the other things she liked doing, she just had to close her eyes and remember the teasing. The hair pulling, the taunting, the mocking and above all the friendlessness that came with being herself was too much to bear. She was sick of it.

She was also increasingly sick of not being able to do anything fun. It was at this point that dreaming came in handy. No one had to know that sometimes in her room she stared blankly at her books and thought about Lopmon and the Digital World and all the fun things they'd do when they were together. She would envision all the things that they could do, just like old times, laughing and playing all day long. No Henry to stop them, no big kids to tell her she was doing anything wrong. Just Lopmon, Suzie and freedom. No one to pretend for, no airs to put on, no acts. It would be so wonderful to have everything make sense again. Lopmon always explained everything Suzie didn't understand. So long as she was beside the human everything made sense.

The dreams Suzie was having at night were different than those of the other Tamers. The Tamers that were having dreams, that was. Henry, Takato and Rika all seemed to be completely calm and oblivious. Even someone as bad at reading body language and sensing the mood as Suzie was would've been able to tell if they were in full on Tamer mode. They were too relaxed for this to be happening to them. Kouta had been the first to realize that only the younger Tamers were having dreams. Visions. Whatever they were called. Ai and Mako dreamt of Impmon searching for them. Himami had dreams of her Kunemon starting fights with Champion level digimon out of sheer bravery and stupidity. (They were, Suzie noted, very well matched in that regard.) Kouta spent whole weeks in the ocean with his Betamon just ahead of him, forever trying to reach his partner fruitlessly. Suzie had expected to dream of Lopmon.

Instead, there was a boy. No one she knew, or at least no one she thought she could remember. She'd have recalled someone dressed like that. He didn't wear the high top sneakers that had been fashionable with pretty much everybody under the age of twenty for the past five years. His pants were baggy and old, well worn and somewhat frayed. Not in that artificial, pre-packaged way that pants at the mall were sold (if any mall even carried clothing so utterly eighties anymore). There was genuine mud and blood on him. His skin was sun-kissed and his arms had scratches and cuts on them from something. Likely, she decided, it was the wilderness he'd been through. Most striking was the digivice around his neck. It was a model they hadn't made in years, like one of the ones that used to be used on the first season of the TV show, but it was different, less refined and older. When he laid his head down on his folded up hoodie to go to sleep next to his partner his digivice glinted in the moon light. There was a large scar across his neck that made him look vulnerable and tough all at once.

Everyone else's dreams had some kind of meaning. Himami was reckless and, despite her shyness, had bouts of boldness, so her digimon got into the same problem without anyone to help him out of it. Ai and Mako were suffering without their partner, trying to find and more importantly keep their friend with them for once. Kouta found himself in a situation he couldn't smart talk his way out of, one where something he'd never had, true acceptance, was at stake. And if he just tried harder he'd have his perfect nakama of two together. He was so close. She could feel the frustration sometimes coming off of him in raw waves. But at least his had a clear meaning. She didn't know the boy in her dreams. She had never seen him before. And he was all alone in the Digital World, somewhere out there where there were no humans, with only his digimon for company. He had a Phoenixmon, a Mega, resting alongside him peacefully. She didn't understand.

So she daydreamed, trying to bring the scene into focus, trying to look through her memory and see if she knew him. She tried to place him. School? No, that didn't fit him. He was too old for that; he'd have been older than Henry. Suzie was sure he was important some how, so maybe Digimon card game tournaments. No, that didn't work quite right either. There was something crucial to his existence that she needed to know. He meant _something_ or he wouldn't be there. She tried to picture him in the stores she walked by and the places she'd been. She tried to fit him in somewhere. Suzie could only really fit him in one place: the past. He looked like someone from old movies and reruns. She could place him nowhere else. Phoenixmon, too, hadn't been used in the games or cards since the late 80's, back when little handheld games and a simple, watered down version of the game were all that existed. Suzie wondered if maybe he was from back then. Maybe he was the first Tamer; the thought made her eyes widen and her breath quicken. It had never occurred to her that there could be others besides her brother's group and her own.

Had the Digital World been around back then? She thought maybe it was, or more accurately, she thought that it would have to be for any of this to make sense. Suzie had never known him, then, even if he was familiar. He had become a Tamer before she was even born. There couldn't possibly be any earlier ones. What had made him so special? He had gotten into the Digital World without even knowing it was possible or having any technology to help him. How could he have done it? She lay awake at night pondering over it. This boy had a digivice. She had one. Was that all it took? If she tried hard enough, could she make it happen with sheer force of will? But while that made sense for her, it didn't for him. She knew beforehand it was real, she'd seen digimon long before she made it into the Digital World; to him, it was all just a myth, a game no more real than Candyland was. A person would have to be very desperate to be as old as he was and believe in something that intensely when back then it was black and white pixels on a handheld toy. It would take a lot to make a person want to get out of this reality that badly.

When Suzie dreamed next, she saw blood, and a knife. She heard a woman's voice screaming, begging someone to stop, and then there were screams of pain and blood seemed to be all she could see. She woke up paralyzed, drenched in cold sweat and shaking as a sense of knowing began to dawn on her.

She stopped daydreaming after that.


	13. After

**Author's Note:** Thank you so, so very much to Tamara Caitlyn, for a review that made me smile and made me feel wonderful. I'm so happy that I wrote something that touched someone (enough to make them cry!) and I can't even express my glee that I'm getting across what I intended with this story. Thank you to all the people reviewing who make this worthwhile.

I… might have to sign up for thirty chapters instead of twenty. I'm not entirely sure I can get across the plot I want in twenty. But we'll have to wait and see.

**

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Theme: After

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**

Once everything had been simple.

They were kids who were going to be heroes some day. That was as far as the future extended. They had no concept of what the word hero meant, of what they were going to have to do and the challenges they'd have to face. They had no idea the things they would see, the people that would let them down and the things that would go wrong. Of course, Kouta knew something would go wrong because he was a pessimist with a sardonic sense of humor, but he wasn't precognitive. The future had more in store for them than they really had even a concept of. Maybe there were omens they missed. Maybe they were fools.

Maybe they were just kids. Kids didn't think about moral complexities and betrayals and plots. The day before Himami, Shuchun, Kouta, Ai and Mako vanished they had been playing tag, eating ice cream sandwiches and debating who would win in a fight between the Kamen Riders and that evil thing from _The Host_. They weren't supposed to watch horror films, but Himami lived in a house without anyone to monitor the TV and Kouta had talked them into it. They spent the next week eyeing every body of water warily. They all tried so hard to act mature, each and every one of them, yet in the end age was more than a number on official records. Age was a lack of seriousness, understanding, a total inability to grasp how dark and grim things really were. The only ones who had any inkling of that were Kouta and Shuchun. She knew things could be life threatening and bad. He knew from experience that people couldn't be trusted. He learned that when his mother left him and his father, taking all the money and never looking back.

It wasn't enough to keep them safe. It wasn't enough to brace her for the lies and the deception, the total shattering of the bond of trust she'd had. She was mature for her age, the key words being _for her age_. She wasn't on an adult's level. She wasn't even playing in the same arena. There were so many things she could've been feeling – fury, betrayal, pain, disbelief – and all she could do was stand there and numbly watch everything as if from a third person perspective. Afterward, she'd barely remember anything anyone said or did, barely recall those blurry moments after a disaster where everything is sound and motion that the brain can't process. Afterwards she couldn't remember it because in that moment of revelations, caught up in awful truths she wished she never learned, she could not picture an afterward. She couldn't comprehend the idea of tomorrow, of life after this. What was there worth living for when everything she'd thought she'd known was lie? Everything she'd believed in had been destroyed in an instant.

She'd be told after the fact that it was terrifying, that her anger had gotten so intense she'd gotten calm and cold and it was scary. She would be told how it was like she wasn't even herself anymore and somehow she could never find it in her to object. Suzie Wong the happy little giggling girl who played dresses was now officially dead and buried. Maybe some part of her had survived their entry into the Digital World, but now she was gone forever and there was no way she was ever coming back. There was no way any of them would ever be children again. In some song of Rika's she'd heard a line about looking into a mirror and knowing you were older. In the faces of her friends she saw reflected the truth of that stray lyric. She knew that they were really, truly screwed. Shuchun was not an idiot. Any childish idealism had been ripped out of her.

But unfortunately for her enemies, underneath that there was a layer of white hot determination, a will power she had never known she had. They were down. They were at a disadvantage – several dozen disadvantages, actually. What they weren't was dead. And so long as there was breath in her, she would not abandon her nakama or give up this battle. Afterward, she'd downplay it as if her team was exaggerating, turning her into some kind of unstoppable warrior figure. She'd laugh off the praise and tell them it was their fight too, their struggle against rising odds, a struggle they hadn't had to stick with. They could have given up. Instead they stood beside her as kids she was proud to know, let alone be friends with. The successes and failures they had were not because of any one person. They fell and rose together, like the breathing of a single entity.

Once upon a time it had been like that for all the Tamers. Then they fell back into their normal lives and let themselves drift apart until the interactions between them were polite and reserved. They acted to each other as they would to distant relatives or people in their class whose name they barely remembered. That was to say nothing of the rift between the original DigiDestined, the select three who had been there and done that before Shuchun or even Rinchei were even born. One thing she'd learned from the entire experience was that other people's nakama could break and shatter like a porcelain plate.

Thankfully, she mused afterwards, hers was a clay vase: not quite as pretty or refined, but infinitely stronger and capable of taking more hits.


	14. Bad Feeling

**Author's Note:** Blame college for delays. My hatred for it is deep and never ending. Life has never been more stressful, so forgive me if we're about to take a flying leap towards the darker end of The Sliding Scale Of Cynicism Versus Idealism.

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**Theme: Bad Feeling

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**The first thing Shuchun thought when she opened her eyes was that this was what the lost girl in the Blair Witch Project had been talking about.

Too afraid to close her eyes, more afraid to look, she clutched her D-Arc tightly enough to leave an imprint in her hand through the gloves. Already sweat was blossoming on her neck, the dry heat lapping it up, flames swirling and dancing all around her until she couldn't think or process what washappening. All she knew, everything within her, told her to run. So she did, on ground that was sprinkled with embers and ash like Hell's snow, and it was then that she heard it, a sound that would repeat itself over and over in her mind for the rest of her life.

Himami was screaming. And this wasn't a scared scream. It was more like what Shuchun remembered from an old war movie, the sound of something going horribly wrong. She whirled around and changed direction, tumbling and falling down a steep incline of a hill that left her feet aching with heat. Everything was too hot. Everything was too much. This morning she'd been watching old _My Melody_ episodes on a low volume in her room. This wasn't her life, it was somebody else's. There was a light up ahead and a screaming figure. Himami was on fire. Shuchun tackled her. They fell into a heap of ashes and limbs on the rocky ground.

Her hands hurt with every handful of dirt, but she got it out quickly enough that the only loss was the jacket, not the skin. There were burn blisters forming. No tears or open wounds. Himami was gasping for air like a fish, her dark gold hair tinged with ash even as she stood up, shakily trying to hold still as Shuchun tied her burned jacket around her waist. Somewhere in the distance a sound halfway between a scream and a distorted radio went off and drove every living thing to their knees. Finally, when it had passed, they looked toward the sky.

It was gray and broken, pixelated, speckles of purple and blue mixed in with gray squares ranging from black to white, large cracks in them all. The ground was a brown-gray, the embers all bright gray like something out of a black and white film. Everything was burned to the ground as far as the eye could see, the hills and mountains unnatural jagged chunks of earth reaching out to the sky. In this disaster zone, two brunettes poked their heads over the large hill behind the girls and called out. Mako and Ai were coming down, making a hesitant path through loose earth that couldn't take even a child's weight. In Ai's arms she clutched the unconscious form of Impmon.

"He took a hit from a really fast Digimon!" Mako said by way of hello. "Our D-Arcs made it run away. I think it was a Champion or maybe higher-"

"-Our D-Arcs couldn't identify it, it was like it wasn't sure if it was a Digimon or not," Ai breathed out, looking at the device with a look of disbelief. "I don't understand how anything can go so fast. That breaks the game's rules, doesn't it Shuchun?"

"I'm here! We're here!" Kouta was running up hill, carrying his protesting Betamon in his arms. "What'd I miss? Did you guys hear that thing earlier?"

They're all sweltering. Sweat drips down their bodies even as they stand still. Once when she was little Suzie poked her head in the oven when her mother was baking. This was worse. Himami is already injured. Everyone's eyes are on her; Kouta's gray, Himami's dark green, Ai and Mako's orange-brown, Betamon's red inhuman ones. Think. She has to think. There is no more prep time. She wasted it all on the game instead of on survival guides and real preperation. She was an idiot. Now the price is already being paid. It's time to focus. She wants to be like Rika, like Jaarin, like Tai from before her, and yet the only thing she can do is take it in as white lightning flashes up above them.

"Digimon," she says in a voice infinitely more confident than she feels. "We're going to find all our Digimon. After that, we can form some kind of plan, start asking around for details about what happened. We're going to be fine once we're with our partners."

She doesn't know it then, but that phrase was going to come back to haunt her.

Everyone gets into line behind her and she makes them take the high ground to get a good look around, and sure enough there's Kunemon, huddled on a rock that doesn't conduct heat well, just trying to survive long enough for his Tamer to get here. That should've been the first clue how very wrong things were. Things here had always been ideal for Digimon, even if they were rough on humans. The Digital World hadn't been lethal or dangerous like this before. Shuchun can feel something inside her scream that this is very wrong. Something isn't right here. She knows it. She feels it. She breathes it.

Their fearless leader keeps them in formation, retrieves Kunemon, and then they make their way through the decimated zone by taking the unsteady dirt path. Their feet sink in and have to be pulled out. Their backs hurt and they're already getting thirsty. This is the only path that doesn't make their feet burn with pain. This isn't the Digital World Suzie dreamed about, the one they all saw in visions. Screeches and screams of helpless Digimon fill their ears. That first night, they keep moving through the dark, gray fire lighting their paths.

The only reason Shuchun doesn't say something like 'I have a bad feeling about this' is because it's so obvious, it doesn't need to be said.


	15. Before

**Author's Note:** Yet again, the things I write will make people wonder if I have some unaddressed issues in my life. The answer is yes, but they're not related to my fanfics. I'm just trying to make up for lost time with more writing. So here, to help explain the Jaarin Rinchei subplot, is what we on TV Tropes call a Breather Episode, otherwise known as filler with plot. This is all about minor characters, after all, and they barely even get dialogue.

Anyway, we'll be back to the main plot very shortly, I promise.

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**Theme: Before  


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**

There was a time when Rinchei and Jaarin were together and Henry was just a baby.

They still called each other Wenchang and Jie Rin, and they spoke Cantonese and learned bits of Mandarin out of books and giggled at the funny sounds. They lived in Hong Kong where the people were so thick they had to hold onto each other to keep from being separated. Old ladies and older men would smile at them from their shops and benches, making comments about him being a good brother or them being a good little couple. At first he didn't even notice, or when he did he straightened up proudly so Jie Rin would smile and cling to his arm a little tighter. She was proud of her cool older brother.

Their apartment was tiny and their parents were working, their mother scrubbing floors and their father putting in overtime. One day they were going to go to Japan and live where the schools were better, apartments larger, and people not so thick everywhere. They were going to have their own rooms and eat onigiri. But for those days they were alone a lot, perhaps more than their parents would have liked, so they were each other's best friends. They went everywhere together because it wasn't safe to go alone, the news said so, and the news was never wrong. Wenchang made her noodles with a weird sauce made up of some random ingredients he thought went well together. The smelly food made her smile and rejoice whenever they got home from school. They ate and watched cartoons side by side.

At first nothing was wrong, and their parents counted themselves blessed to have kids that got along so well. They were uneasy with Jie Rin still sleeping in Wenchang's bed, because it was infantile, but they had neither the space nor the time to get another bed. So long as she didn't complain about it, where was the harm in it? They stayed up whispering secrets to each other and giggling. On school days Wenchang walked her there before going to his own classroom, because he was nearly six and knew everything. He knew the route to his aunt's house where his baby brother stayed most of the time, because the landlord had limits on the number of people and this was one too much. He knew how to get dinner from the grocery store or the hole-in-the-wall stalls on his way home so his mother would be happy. He could tie shoes so that they came undone and sneakers thus became slip ons.

Before the move to Japan, there was a night where Jie Rin was laying with her head on his lap, and he asked her if she would marry him when they got older. She asked if they could have a dog. When that condition was met, she said yes. And they had dinner and it was like nothing was different, other than that now he knew she liked him more than the other boys, and that meant he was cool. Wenchang tried hard to be cool, messing up his hair with water each morning, learning Japanese to impress his parents, and yet no one's opinion mattered more than Jie Rin's. She was his best friend. Without her he would have been lost.

Then they moved to Japan, and everything changed.

They were made of, for their hair, eyes, everything from their backpacks to their accents. They were teased and some adults said mean things when they thought they weren't listening. They got their own rooms and didn't really know what to do with all that space. Every day they walked through an unfamiliar jungle of a world, filled with kanji they could barely read and people that didn't like them, and they reached for each other's hands. They held on tight until they reached the school. They didn't use their Japanese names for each other. At lunch they huddled together at the outcasts table and lapsed into their native tongue, and it was then that they began to really realize how odd they were. Other kids did not do these things with their siblings. They didn't play nice with them or talk to them about everything, they didn't even like each other. No one had as many kids as their family did. They weren't like the others, and in Japan the nail that stuck up must be hammered down.

For nearly two school years, they took it. They got called every slur in the books, every nasty name no child should hear, and had food thrown at them more than once. They found their backpacks in trash cans outside school once. Their Japanese got better and yet the taunting about their voices remained. Their parents got mad at them when Wenchang slept in Jie Rin's bed one night after having a nightmare about not being able to protect her. They had to eat new foods they didn't like, write in a whole new alphabet - even their names were taken from them. Their parents were in love with Japan. They thought it was perfect and wouldn't hear a word against it. Their mother got to stay home now. Everything was perfect and everything was awful. The only thing they had left to depend on in this world was each other.

One day on the playground the older boys formed a circle and began shoving Jie Rin. She was spinning, lost in a tangle of arms and anger and people who hated her, flying off her feet, until finally one of them threw her to the ground, laughing. Wenchang was a blur of motion. He was angry, livid, his fists faster than the angry words he was saying in Chinese, his eyes glinting like gray fire. The circle broke as another, one of spectators, formed around them. Jie Rin got to her feet slowly. Her knees were torn up and there was a large bruise forming on her cheek, but she stood up and reached for her brother's hand. It was curled into a fist so tight his knuckles were turning white.

"Renchei's in love with his sister!" one of the bullies shouted, and suddenly the siblings realized how tightly the world was packed around them. People were staring. Whispers were everywhere. Some people were laughing. Nobody looked like they doubted it. Jie Rin stepped closer to her only protection. His eyes were on the crowd.

He threw her to the ground.

"I don't love her!" he snapped. "You're just making things up because no one would talk to you otherwise, you ugly future drop out!"

Then he stormed off. Jie Rin was left on the ground. Everyone was staring at her, and she was watching her brother's retreating form. The bullies followed him. The crowd dispersed, deprived of a fight yet still hopeful for another one. She sat on the cold concrete, feeling tears well up in her eyes. He wasn't even looking back at her. Jie Rin stood up and walked back into the school building. The nurse fretted over her. Her brother didn't come look in on her. He wasn't there to walk her home after school. On the bulletin board in the front entrance, where they normally met to walk together, there were sign up sheets. She signed up for everything that looked like fun. If her brother didn't want to be around her, she'd find someone who did.

She didn't love him, either.


End file.
